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Perl has had a canonical test suite in the core repository and shipped those tests with every source distribution since 1987. As of at least Ruby 1.8.7 (May 2008), this was not true of Ruby.

I wouldn't equate a core development team with that language's community. The Perl core team certainly was and is fanatical about testing, but the community? I think they caught up much later. In the case of Ruby we have the opposite situation - the community

In 2000, CPAN authors had the expectation to write tests. The CPAN client ran those tests when installing modules.

Yeah, but I don't know when a real jump was made from running that stock one-test default test file that h2xs generated to people being really good about writing tests. That's hard to know for sure, but I would put it somewhere around 2002. But still, yeah, pretty good.

You don't even have to do this with Perl. Someone writes a new test module, once, uploads it to the CPAN, and then everyone

That's hard to know for sure, but I would put it somewhere around 2002.

It started in late 2001, but you're probably right that it only became popular and inevitable in 2002. I spent a lot of time in late 2001 avoiding finishing a book and writing tests for the Perl 5 core instead.

I think the decision to not run them by default is, in part, because of the weakness of Test::Unit 1.x.

That's what I don't get about the "Rah rah, TDD whee!" cheerleading from some parts of the Ruby community. You might as well not write tests if you're not going to run them.

: 1. What is the possibility of this being added in the future?
In the near future, the probability is close to zero. In the distant
future, I'll be dead, and posterity can do whatever they like... :-) --lwall

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